“I don’t want it,” I said fretfully, and threw it out again.

I must have slept after that. When I wakened, Amy was dozing in a chair, and I lay still and tried to think. I couldn’t remember anything at first. I might have been a newborn baby, with no past whatever. There was no Don Morgan, no Tony or Maud or Margery Stoddard. Only Amy, dozing by the fire with her mouth slightly open. When my mind did begin to operate, it was in pictures, without any chronology.

Ever since that time I have read about people who, after a blow like mine, immediately go on fighting or talking of whatever they had been doing. I don’t believe it. It was actually Monday before I made any sense. Not so much sense even then. I had been walking down the drive at the Farm and somebody had been behind me. That was as far as I got until Monday, some time in the afternoon, when I roused again to see Jim Conway in the room, and Bill Sterling carefully replacing the ice bag.

“I wish you’d take that damned thing away,” I said fretfully.

Bill grinned. “She’s all right, Jim,” he said. “I guess you can talk to her.”

That was when my mind clicked, and I knew I could not talk to Jim. “My head aches. I wish you’d let me alone,” I said peevishly.

But Jim had no idea of letting me alone. He came over and stood by the bed. “I won’t bother you,” he said. “All I want to know is how you got that bump on your head.”

I closed my eyes. “I must have fallen. I don’t remember.”

“Fallen? Are you saying you fell into that pool?”

“What pool?” I said incredulously. “I wasn’t in any pool at all.”

He grinned. “All right,” he said. “What were you doing at the Stoddards’ in the middle of the night? You know that, all right.”

I closed my eyes again. “I was taking a ride,” I said feebly. “I turned in there, on the chance somebody was still up. That’s all, and I wish you’d go away.”

But Jim did not move. He stood staring down at me coldly. “You’re a rotten liar, Pat. You made an appointment with Margery Stoddard. Reynolds heard you doing it. You drove there and left your car in the drive, and you saw Mrs. Stoddard. Don’t deny it. She admits it herself. Then what? She says the last she saw of you, you were on your way to the car. That true?”

I tried to nod, which made me realize that my neck was out of service for the time at least.

“I wouldn’t excite her,” Bill warned. But Jim stood solidly by the bed, regarding me with unfriendly eyes.

“I’m beginning to wonder about you, Pat,” he said. “If you think you are helping anybody, you’re wrong. They’ve got Julian Stoddard. It’s too late to do anything.”

I was horrified. I remember moaning that I had caused Julian’s arrest, although I didn’t know how; and finally I told him the whole story: the snapshot of Margery, my appointment with her, her admission of the facts, and my feeling on the drive that somebody was behind me. He listened soberly.